Innovative Food Tech Company Memphis Meats Makes the News

By SLNext

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Apr 6th, 2017

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Since 2015, San Leandro-based Memphis Meats has been working on something unique. With raised awareness of humanitarian and sustainability issues in the meat industry, Memphis Meats has joined a growing number of companies working to invent better alternatives to traditional meat. While other companies are looking for ways to use plants to mimic the real thing, Memphis Meats isn’t trying to replace meat — they are growing it.

With $3 million in funding, the company is at the forefront of a field called “cellular agriculture”, developing methods to cultivate animal muscle tissue on a cellular level. For the time being, this process is costly and time-consuming, but as the company grows, refines its process, and is able to increase production, the product will become more affordable.

The goal is to arrive at a truly clean meat manufacturing model, with the potential to reduce the environmental impacts of raising, feeding, housing, and terminating livestock by up to 90%. A little over a year ago, Memphis Meats publicly announced its first beef product, presenting meatballs for sampling to a select group of attendees. Just last month, the company debuted its “clean” chicken and duck meat.

This approach has gained the attention of big companies, such as poultry giants Hormel and Tyson. Tyson has even launched a venture capital fund in order to invest in this emerging technology. Still, it will be a while before the average consumer is able to sample the product. Memphis Meats is still developing its methods and refining its processes and hopes to make its products commercially available by the year 2021.